


Getting Aziraphale Off Twitter

by SporkofDoom



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:41:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27232174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SporkofDoom/pseuds/SporkofDoom
Summary: Aziraphale uses his newfound free time to discover social media activism. Crowley is tolerant... to a point.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19





	Getting Aziraphale Off Twitter

Crowley felt badly about the puppies who had no home. He could not help himself. So many sad-looking, cold, matted dogs in metal cages waiting for their forever homes. Awful. Sad, thin dogs seemed to be packed in cages all over the world. Urgent Death Row Dog and #AdoptDontShop were doing good works, he knew. 

Still, he wished Aziraphale would get off Twitter. Crowley did not see how tweets would help that black Labrador retriever in Bloomington, Indiana -- not Aziraphale’s tweets anyway. For that matter, he did not see how tweets would stop overpopulation, fix the world’s drinking water or prevent the extinction of endangered animal species. 

Demons did not seek out endangered dogs to rescue, not even lost hellhounds. Not that hellhounds were ever endangered – quite the opposite, and woe to any poor shelter that received one of those puppies with glowing red eyes. But saving the average puppy -- imagine Beelzebub, Hastur, or even Dagon doing that.

And demons did not tweet, of course. Most of them were flummoxed by social media. If they did participate online, they had fun with it – maybe comparing a partner to a stale ham sandwich or telling a Reddit user that obviously, yes, he was the asshole. More tech-savvy demons did like that Reddit am-I-the-asshole thing. 

He himself had quite appreciated the fellow who had decided to prank his friends by telling them he was an “appletarian,” a person who only ate apples or drank apple juice. The guy had eaten nothing around his friends except apples for weeks, until those friends finally got together and faked a movie night to stage an intervention. Only humans could be that weird, Crowley thought, loving the idea of the man eating beef jerky as he explained that appletarianism had been his personal joke. Quite unreasonable of the man’s girlfriend to dump him for such an inspired bit of madness. 

Yes, a few demons did social media. But Crowley did not know a single demon who could sit in front of a screen like Aziraphale, reaching out to complete strangers, one after another. Hour after hour, protesting… what? Today it was Somalia and lonely dogs, but yesterday it had been technology for students in economically disadvantaged areas. Tomorrow, it might be GMOs again. Aziraphale positively hated GMOs. The angel was adamant that if God had not made a grain, that grain should not be allowed to grace a table. When Crowley suggested a compromise, making the suspect corn into whiskey, Aziraphale had just harrumphed, too. 

“You obviously do not understand,” the angel had said. “They have played with the genes, Crowley. The genes! It’s _genetics_.”

“Alcohol kills germs,” Crowley said. “Maybe alcohol kills genetics, too.”

“Crowley!”

“Seriously,” he had continued patiently. “If it’s dangerous to eat the stuff, why not drink it? Nothing lives in whiskey. Whiskey probably doesn’t even have genes, right?”

“Er… Um… I suppose not. It’s not alive,” Aziraphale said, with an endearing expression of confusion that made Crowley hopeful. Maybe he could at least shut down the topic of GMOs.

“Exactly. Corn whiskey is the answer to your problem. We convert all the modified corn into whiskey and the problem vanishes. Why not turn those GMOs into a delicious source of empty calories that makes people happy?”

“It can’t be that simple,” Aziraphale had protested. 

Nevertheless Aziraphale had tweeted out the corn whiskey suggestion and had gotten a surprising number of likes and retweets.

Crowley had to admit GMOs had been a simple fix. Some of Aziraphales’s latest concerns posed much more complicated problems. How could there be a global shortage of water? Water appeared to be everywhere. Global warming? London had been begging to be warmed for as long as he remembered. And as to gasoline and air pollution, how was the Bentley supposed to get to Tadfield without petrol? 

Not for the first time, he wished he had never explained social media to Aziraphale. He had been showing off. Crowley liked to show off his earthly skills, enjoying the looks of admiration he sometimes coaxed out of his best friend, the occasional “Brilliant!” Before non-Armageddon, Aziraphale had come to rely on Crowley’s craftiness, on his understanding of humans and the _mise en scene_ around him. Crowley was never so crude as to say, “See? I‘m a wizard. Watch me drive!” – but he knew the angel was impressed by his ease with cars, computers and other devices. While slightly appalled by the secret sigil underlying the M-25 motorway, Aziraphale nonetheless appreciated the artistry in the M-25 and Crowley’s other past meddling. 

Nevertheless… In one particularly sobering moment a few hours earlier, _the angel had declined an invitation to lunch._

“Too much to do,” he had explained. “I am coordinating with the Legion for Humanity or something. They build houses. I am going to help build a house. They use hammers, you know. Nails, bricks, plumbing fixtures, rulers, the whole thing!” Aziraphale had clapped his hands together in excitement. “Making houses sounds like so much fun.” 

“What?” Crowley stared at his best friend.

“Wait, that’s the Habitat for Humanity,” Aziraphale had answered. “The Legion for Humanity is the group fighting the robot threat.”

“WHAT?”

“Robots. The Americans brought them in. They have them in McDonalds and now Burger King. We must stop them. First, it’s only hamburgers, but next it will be the fish and chips, and then the pasties – a domino effect. The fellow at the legion explained it to me. Pretty soon the robots won’t just stand there, either. They will be walking up to people, forcing them to buy chips they don’t even want.”

Crowley had stared at his friend helplessly.

Aziraphale had committed to about a year’s worth of causes in slightly less than a week, he knew. The angel being the angel, he had probably _promised_ people too. Oh, yes. I will certainly join you at McDonalds at your robot protest. We will stop them! Yes, of course, I will bring my hammer to … where was that? First thing in the morning!

What could Crowley do? He had set the whole thing off a mere six days earlier, while sitting in front of Aziraphale’s new laptop, a whimsical purchase fueled by “airline miles.”

“You travel in airplanes?” Crowley had asked, having no sense of the trouble ahead.

“Oh, no, although that might be fun. I just use this small bit of plastic that says British Airways on it, you see.”

Crowley had handled the navy blue charge card, flipping it over to see the angel’s signature: A. Z. Fell. Crowley still had no idea how that charge card worked for Aziraphale. Oh, he understood the basics of charge cards. People used them in bars all the time. But how had Aziraphale gotten his personal British Airways card? Did he pay for what he charged? He was an angel, so he almost undoubtedly did pay off his balance.

“So why did British Airways get you a laptop?” he had asked.

“It’s points,” the angel had explained. “Dollars are points and you get rewards. I have seen these metal boxes in coffee shops for years and people always seemed so busy with them. I was curious. But I do need your help, Crowley. How does one get that internet thing? I want a siteweb for the bookstore.”

“Website,” Crowley had replied automatically. “But Aziraphale, if you had a website, you might get more customers. You don’t want customers. People might even try to buy books over the internet.”

“They can do that?”

“Yes.”

“What if I refuse to sell them the books?”

Crowley had sighed then. Because he had used the internet for fun to introduce computer viruses into various government offices, he knew how to get Aziraphale set-up. Introducing him to the world wide web had seemed harmless enough. Once Aziraphale understood how websites worked, Crowley felt sure he would decide to leave the bookstore in comfortable obscurity. 

Six days. Only six days since that time when cyberspace and Aziraphale had seemed to occupy entirely different worlds. Now those worlds had collided—and Crowley was not sure he should be happy. He wondered how God had felt on the 6th day. Had she thought things through? He had not.

Oh, he understood his current predicament perfectly. He had taken a do-gooder, a natural _humanitarian_ , to use the perfect word, and shown him a conduit to all the good causes on the whole planet Earth. Crowley could walk away from Somalia and GMOs– though possibly not puppies – but he was made of sterner stuff than Aziraphale. 

“Lunch?” Crowley tried again. “You have to eat.”

“Actually I don’t. No more than you do.”

“Yes, but you like it so much. Perhaps a delicious green dragon roll with beef-wrapped asparagus and one of those little octopus salads at Kamehachi?” Crowley suggested hopefully. “We could share a flight of sakes.”

Aziraphale seemed to come back from the robot threat at hearing about the green dragon roll. 

“Well, I do need to go out to buy a hammer,” he said. 

4 Months Later

Crowley was slouching back into his favorite plush brown armchair, one of two set on either side of a circular walnut table. In the background, the BBC News appeared to be showing pictures of an ominously circular weather pattern, but Crowley had muted the sound. Aziraphale had been watching the news again. 

News? He should never have shown Aziraphale the internet. He should have dumped the laptop into the Thames. Or simply thrown it out of the Bentley’s window onto an embankment in the countryside. After hitting the damn thing with one of the stupid hammers. But it was too late. If the laptop went away, Aziraphale would simply buy another one. Probably charge the thing to get points, too. 

Crowley felt trapped. He knew how to say no, but Aziraphale wasn’t asking permission. He knew that Aziraphale was planning to take him to the animal shelter tomorrow, and he was already deciding what kind of dog he could accept, what kind of a dog might fit with Eugenie, the short-haired, chocolate and tan dachshund that Aziraphale had gotten him for last Christmas. 

Eugenie wagged her tail, as he reached down to scratch behind her ears.

“I could say no, but I’d just come home and find a dog, Eugenie. Once he has a brainstorm, there’s sweet fuck all to be done about it. I promise, nothing over 2 stone, nothing above my knee. And we won’t leave you alone to go build houses. You stay with us.”

He was talking to Eugenie a lot. The dog was a perfect listener, and never came at Crowley sideways with another Twitter-induced inspiration. Crowley had begun to wonder if Aziraphale even heard what he was saying. They talked, but the truth was he no longer felt that Aziraphale heard him.

Aziraphale had gone someplace he could not yet quite follow. He blamed Twitter, but he also thought the TV might have something to do with what was happening. Aziraphale was certainly watching the screen intently. He had also taken to spending time on YouTube -- probably an inevitability. 

“Too bad I’m not his old man,” Crowley told Eugenie. “I’d take that laptop away, send him to his room, maybe smack him one, and then send him to bed without supper. You know. Good parenting. That’s what some people need.

“But I don’t know how I’d keep him in his room.”

Eugenie wagged her tail.

_________________________________________________________________

Aziraphale adored Supernatural. Every evening, Crowley and he watched an episode of Supernatural after dinner, their latest series and much better than its predecessor, Travelers. He’d like Travelers, but then it was cancelled, leaving threads of plots all over the place. He’d also liked Lost until Lost got lost. The plane crash, the smoke monster, the hatch, the island – what was real and what wasn’t? 

Aziraphale hated divergent time lines, feared them even. Somewhere there were universes where Crowley had gotten the right baby to the right family, Earths where monstrous hellhounds terrorized the cowering remnants of humanity, on worlds run by Satan himself. In an infinite number of universes, Aziraphale was living alone, if he was living at all. What about those versions where he and Crowley had not been quick enough to figure out that scrap of prophecy, had not exchanged bodies at that critical fulcrum point in time? The universes where he had been forced into the fire and Crowley had been thrown into a bathtub of holy water?

Best not to think about such things. Besides, there was plenty to think about. Crowley’s corn whiskey solution had been a winner on the GMO front, but what about the tomatoes? Would tomato whiskey even sell? Golden rice could probably be turned into sake or maybe vodka, but what if those scientists were right about the children in Bangladesh, China and India requiring the vitamin A in that rice? Could they get vitamin A from sake or vodka? How much vodka could undernourished children consume without hurting their health? The problem with all this science was – well, it was filled with science, and new scientific discoveries kept popping up all over the place. 

Thank goodness for Crowley, he thought. Crowley could explain almost anything. Sometimes he felt a bit wary as he listened, suspecting Crowley might be making up a few answers as he went along, but then again… The internet worked, didn’t it? So did the giant TV on the wall. 

Yes, Supernatural was better than Travelers or Lost. He still understood what Sam and Dean were doing, although a daunting eight seasons remained ahead of them. He so hoped Dean and Castiel figured it out before the end. They were perfect, the way they sacrificed for each other, fought for each other, _loved_ each other. 

“Still plenty of time to go sideways,” he remarked to Eugenie. “Still time for the series to jump the shark, as the Americans say.”

Eugenie wagged her tail. 

Crowley had gone out to pick up Chinese takeaway.

When Aziraphale was not on the laptop, he and Crowley often talked about Supernatural lately, Sam, Dean, Castiel, vampires, Leviathans, the “Crowley” who ran Hell and the whole Supernatural vision of heaven -- which was surprisingly accurate. They also talked about the usual domestic stuff, such as Eugenie, the history of ancient Greece, and whether Debussy was more boring than Beethoven. Beethoven might be technically better, but he had been so overplayed, Aziraphale contended. Crowley could listen to Beethoven seemingly forever, however, whereas he always wandered off during Debussy. On some subjects, they simply had to agree to disagree. 

Other subjects somehow... never came up. He had a few new ideas he wanted to share with Crowley, but… So odd how two people who had known each other forever, who had saved the world together, and who had lived together for months could somehow fail to … well, communicate. They talked and talked, and yet...

“I think it may be my fault, Eugenie,” he said thoughtfully, picking up the dog and putting her in his lap. “It’s a madhouse out on the internet, you know, but I went there for a reason. I mean, besides the obvious reasons. The dogs need forever homes, the people need houses, and the ice -- that ice is simply melting too fast. I can’t just sit here and watch. Besides, building houses is fun. you know. I rather fear, though, that _I_ may be melting too fast.

“Who am I, Eugenie? What am I? Could it be that I have lost my way? That’s not it exactly. I know what I want to do. But I think I have gotten so busy that I keep missing my opportunities, my real opportunities. Too much, Eugenie. I love being Aziraphale@AZFell, but I think perhaps I may be doing too much. It’s amazing really, having all these lovely friends, but have I been seduced by the ease of meeting new people through social media? Who are these people, Eugenie? Am I going too fast?” 

Their life had changed quite a lot lately. Aziraphale kept buying hammers, nails, drills and screwdrivers. He took his new toys out with him to build housing for the homeless, passing them out like the Starbucks gift cards he also kept buying. He now had so many British Airways points! And everybody at the building projects always seemed delighted to see him. He liked building houses. He had gotten quite good with the hammer. It helped that hitting his thumb really didn’t hurt him much when he missed those nails. Crowley preferred the electric drill, although Crowley sometimes skipped the construction projects lately.

“We don’t always have to do the same things, Eugenie,” he said to the dachshund. “Crowley should do Crowley.”

He picked up a screwdriver and waved it in the air. 

“Something’s wrong, though” he told the dog. “I think I know what’s wrong too. I just don’t know how to … well, to explain.” Aziraphale shook his head. 

“I was content. I liked living in this flat. I didn’t mind those bookstore customers below. Sometimes I even sold them books. Then I would come upstairs to my cozy apartment to find my best friend. Eugenie, I somehow miss those early days. I love building houses, my dear, and you should see the looks of distress at McDonalds when we arrive there with our big signs – although that has gotten much better since I started handing out the Starbucks gift cards. I am sure those robots will be gone soon. I am doing good works, which is exactly as it should be.”

He heard Crowley’s steps on the stairs coming up from the bookstore below. 

“Still, I believe I have gotten sidetracked,” he said softly. “It may be the robots will have to wait.”

_________________________________________________________________

“Happy family vegetables, moo shu pork, pot stickers, General Tso’s chicken. It’s never the same as the real General Tso’s chicken, but I do like the spices.” Crowley pulled out the chopsticks and napkins from the brown, paper bag. 

Aziraphale nodded. This would take some courage, he realized. 

“Great show, Supernatural,” he said.

“S’alright,” Crowley answered. “I mean, I like it. Wouldn’t want to be Sam or Dean, though. Rum business, being a hunter.” 

“Hmmm, well, it is that, although quite clearly the universe must have hunters. One can hardly let the leviathans run loose, not shape shifters with super strength who eat people.”

Crowley shrugged. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale murmured, as he set out two compostable paper plates out on the crowded walnut table. “We need to talk.”

Crowley arched his eyebrows. 

“Can’t we just have a peaceful dinner? How ‘bout we just relax tonight?”

“Oh, my.” Aziraphale said. “I have screwed up. They say that, you know. Screwed up. I rather like the expression. It’s like you took the drill and pointed it wrong. That captures the idea rather well, don’t you think?”

“If you say so,” Crowley nodded agreeably. He made it a habit to agree with things he did not understand. 

“Oh, don’t agree like that!” Aziraphale replied. “I want to have a discussion and I can’t have a discussion if you decide to agree with me.”

“You want me to disagree with you?”

“I want you to listen to me. It took me some time to reason all this out and I can’t just pack it all into one serving of moo shu pork. Please. Please. I do need you to listen because this is a complicated explanation.”

“If this is another cause, if we have to save something, can we at least save something interesting, like the peat bogs?”

“That is a good place to start.”

“Peat bogs?” Crowley set his chopsticks down, and got up to go to the galley kitchen for two large, white mugs. He pulled a bottle of chilled sake out of the fridge, and poured two generous servings of the rice wine.

Aziraphale waited until he returned and set the mugs down. 

“Peat bogs,” Crowley repeated. 

“Yes, I want to say first how much I have appreciated your… tolerance these last couple of months. Your help creating homes for the homeless has been especially touching. Oh, Crowley. I do hope you care about the homeless, but I know you have been standing in those cold frame dwellings when you might have been out driving instead. And carrying that protest sign outside of McDonalds. That was marvelous, even if you left to eat after only 15 minutes, and even if you did order from the robot. I am quite convinced you did all this for me. Just as you helped me with the whales, the ice caps, the golden rice, and all that science stuff. I’ve been rather a bore at times, I suspect. Yet you just waited for me in the hardware shops.”

“Can’t drive all the time,” Crowley answered. “I wouldn’t mind if we took a break from all that saving the world stuff, though. you know.”

“I know. That’s why I appreciate all the help you have given me lately. But here’s the thing. Sometimes you have to go through the burning M-25. But maybe sometimes you can take a helicopter instead. Or even a submarine. It depends on conditions. Yes, it depends on conditions.”

Crowley reflected that not many conditions would make a submarine his vehicle of choice, but he focused his golden eyes on his friend. Aziraphale sometimes dithered, but when dithering was often at his most inspired. He hoped this prelude was not merely leading up to tomorrow’s dog rescue.

“So?” Crowley prompted.

“So I think we had to have this interlude. I will call it the Time of Tweets, I think. The Tweets kept me at the laptop, you see. They also got me out in the world trying to find myself. Trying to learn what I wanted. I had never had a chance to do that, Crowley. Heaven told me what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to be. Now, obviously, we blew up the heavenly plan. Kerplooie! Stopping Armageddon. What a terrifying dereliction of duty. I have been rather lost since then. The internet gave me a chance to try to figure out who I was.”

“Kerplooie?” Crowley repeated gently. 

Aziraphale smiled, a quiet, half-smile. 

“You had an advantage, you know,” he said. “Demons don’t follow orders. They naturally do what they want. I had been doing what other people wanted me to do for so long that that life seemed natural. Then … They betrayed me, Crowley!”

“They did,” Crowley agreed quietly. 

“All those years of service, and they were going to roast me like some angelic marshmallow.”

“Hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys,” Crowley observed. 

“Indeed. But I am getting there. I am also beginning to understand a few other things. The Time of Tweets was essential to getting here, but do you know what I have realized?”

“What’s that?”

“I have to thank YouTube for this one really. Supernatural led me to YouTube where I found Elvis Presley. I didn’t need to find Elvis Presley, but Elvis Presley was perfect. 

“Self-destructed rather young.”

“Did he? So sad. Don’t distract me now, though. I don’t want my courage to fail me. Do you know Elvis’s songs?”

“Some,” Crowley confessed. “Used to like those beach blanket movies. Pretty sure he did some beach blanket music. Or music like it. But Supernatural led you to YouTube which led you to Elvis Presley.”

“You have such a talent for making things simple,” Aziraphale said admiringly. “Yes, and I found The Song. I found the video.”

“Yes?”

“There was this video, this breathtaking video, of Dean and Castiel to “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” Well, Castiel’s an angel! And Dean is human, which is pretty much the same as being a demon. Humans are simply wimpy demons if you think about it. So there they were. Holding each other. Helping each other. Hurting each other because they can’t get along without each other, but they are always being separated. Comforting each other. The love, Crowley, you can see the love.

“There are lots of other videos, too. We should watch 101 Reasons to Love Dean and Castiel. That one’s wonderful. But do you know what struck me?”

“No idea.” Crowley was telling the truth. 

“Just because Castiel is an angel he doesn’t think he has to always act like a stereotypical angel. Just watch him hold Dean when Dean is hurt. Watch how he looks into Dean’s eyes.”

Crowley did not say anything. 

“Why can’t I do that? Crowley, I don’t have to follow any rules. All those Habitat for Humanity people are sure we are a couple anyway. And we are a couple. You have been the focus of my life for how long? How many centuries? Even when we didn’t see each other for awhile, you always made the Earth an exciting place. I wanted to stay here because… because you were here.”

“I always felt the same way about you,” Crowley said simply. 

“I know.” Aziraphale reached out to take Crowley’s hand. “So isn’t this platonic thing getting old? Can’t we make our own video?” 

“Literally?”

“Excuse me?”

Crowley grinned. “Never mind. We can get to that later if you are interested. While we are talking, I might also like to assert… shall we call it, my prerogative as your partner? Can we put some limits on all this damn screen time?”

Azirphale stood up and reached across the table to pull Crowley to his feet. 

“That might be negotiated,” he said. “What can you offer in exchange?” He stepped around the table, pulling Crowley into his arms. 

The universe was such a strange place. Six millennia and he had never been to this place and yet… nothing in his life had ever been as simple and right as this feeling. He smoothed a strand of red hair away from Crowley’s face, looked into those serpentine eyes, ran his hand along the sharp angles of the demon’s face, the face he knew better than his own. He listened to the soft moan. Across the millennia and a few inches of physical space he reached in to kiss Crowley.

Crowley trembled and pulled Aziraphale closer, his arms tightly pressing the angel against him. All this time… Such a small gesture, that kiss, yet it redefined two lives entirely. He knew that as he ran his tongue over Aziraphale’s lips, felt Aziraphale gasp. 

Aziraphale pulled back slightly.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“Love you more,” Crowley whispered back. 

So Crowley.

So them. 

Aziraphale laughed.

Of all the alternative universes, this was the one he had somehow chosen. And it was perfect. 


End file.
